menace

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See also: menacé

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈmɛnɪs/
  • Rhymes: -ɛnɪs
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Etymology 1

From Middle English manace, from Old French manace, menace, &c., from Late Latin minācia (“threat, menace”), from Latin mināx (“threatening”) + -ia (suffix forming abstract nouns).

Noun

menace (plural menaces)

  1. A perceived threat or danger.
    • 1697, Virgil, “The Ninth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. , London: Jacob Tonson, , →OCLC:
      the dark menace of the distant war.
  2. The act of threatening.
  3. (informal) An annoying and bothersome person or thing.
Synonyms
  • (the act or process of threatening, a tendency to threaten): minacity, minacy
Derived terms
Translations

References

Etymology 2

First attested in 1303: from Middle English manacen, from Old French menacer, manecier, manechier and Anglo-Norman manasser, from the assumed Vulgar Latin *mināciāre, from Latin minācia, whence the noun.

Verb

menace (third-person singular simple present menaces, present participle menacing, simple past and past participle menaced) (transitive, intransitive)

  1. (transitive) To make threats against (someone); to intimidate.
    to menace a country with war
    • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      My master […] did menace me with death.
    • 1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, : Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474:
      The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!
  2. To threaten (an evil to be inflicted).
  3. To endanger (someone or something); to imperil or jeopardize.
Translations

References

  • “menace, v.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary

French

Etymology

Inherited from Old French manace, from Latin minācia (“threat”), a noun based on mināx (“threatening”).

Pronunciation

Noun

menace f (plural menaces)

  1. threat

Related terms

Verb

menace

  1. inflection of menacer:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

Friulian

Etymology

From Latin minācia (“threat”), possibly via Italian minaccia or another Romance language.

Noun

menace f (plural menacis)

  1. threat, menace

Related terms

Middle English

Verb

menace

  1. Alternative form of manacen

Spanish

Verb

menace

  1. inflection of menazar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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